Automatic chat assignment (Round Robin assignment)

Anuja Updated by Anuja

This article explains how Team Inbox admins can setup automatic chat assignment for their users.

What is automatic chat assignment?

Automatic chat assignment refers to the process by which the Bot will automatically assign newly opened chats directly to a Team Inbox user belonging to the team to which the chat is assigned.

The Bot will check for the team members that are online (available) at that point in time and assign a new chat to each member one by one, in a round-robin manner.

This feature is only available for Business plan users

How to setup the automatic assignment

There are 2 ways in which automatic assignment can be setup in Wati.

1) Via Default Action
  1. Go to Automations > Default actions
  2. Scroll to the bottom and select the setting "Assign newly opened chats in round robin manner within users of the assigned team"
  3. Click on Save settings

How it works

  • Let's assume a new chat has been started by a customer. In this case, the chat gets assigned to the Default team.
  • When the automatic assignment setting is turned on, the chat will get assigned to any of the online members of the Default team, instead of getting assigned to the Bot.
  • Then the next incoming chat will be assigned to the next team member, ensuring that each team member gets covered one by one.
  • Similarly, if you have setup a Keyword Action to route an incoming chat to a particular team, the automatic assignment setting will assign the incoming chat to an online member of the team.

Below are some detailed scenarios explaining the outcome when the setting if OFF v/s when is it ON

Chat status

Other automation rules for assignment

Current behavior (round robin setting is OFF)

Expected behavior (round robin setting is ON)

Open When a customer initiates a conversation (UIC)

None

Agent: Bot

Team: Default team

Agent: Specific team member as per round robin logic

Team: Default team

Broadcast > Open When a customer replies to a broadcast message

None

Agent: Bot

Team: Same as the team assigned when the broadcast was sent

Agent: Specific team member as per round robin logic

Team: Same as the team assigned when the broadcast was sent

Expired > Open When a customer initiates a message on an expired chat

None

Agent: Bot

Team: Last assigned team, when ticket was in expired status, is maintained

Agent: Specific team member as per round robin logic

Team: Same as the team assigned when the chat expired

Solved > Open (within 24 hours and after 24 hours as well) When customer initiates a message to a solved chat

None

Agent: Bot

Team: Last assigned team, when ticket was in solved status, is maintained

Agent: Specific team member as per round robin logic

Team: Same as the team assigned when the chat was solved

Open

“Assign team” routing set under keyword match

Agent: Bot

Team: As defined in the automation rule

Agent: Specific team member as per round robin logic

Team: As defined in automation rule

2) Via Chatbots

If you are setting up chatbot flows to handle and route your incoming chats, you can choose to enable or disable automatic chat assignment everytime you assign the chat to a team.

  1. Go to Automations > Chatbots
  2. Select any existing chatbot flow or create a new flow
  3. Select the Assign Team node and customize it
  4. Choose the Round Robin option and select the team to whom the chat needs to be assigned to
  5. Click on save
  6. Add other components of the flow and save the flow

How it works

  • When the automation flow is in progress and the chat is assigned to a team as configured in the flow, the chat will also get automatically assigned to a member of the team if the round-robin option was chosen
  • If the option to skip offline users was unchecked in the chatbot flow, then the chat assignment will also happen to members that are offline
  • When you keep the assignment type as “Direct”, it will only assign the chat to the team/s specified and NOT automatically assign it to a member of that team (same as the current logic for assign teams)
    This chatbot setting works independently of the setting explained in 1) above. Both of them can be configured together or without each other.

Important points and other limitations

  • Automatic chat assignment will only work for chats that are assigned to a single team. Chats assigned to multiple teams will be ignored and will not be assigned to agents directly.
  • Only agents whose status is “Available” will be assigned chats in round robin, unless a user specifies to assign to “Offline” agents via the chatbot flows.
  • Automatic chat assignment will happen within the specified Working Hours only and when Holiday Mode is OFF.
  • A user with role = “Admin” is excluded from the round robin assignment. Only users with role = “Operator” will be considered when assigning chats.
  • If a chatbot gets triggered or any keyword is detected that triggers an automation response, that will get precedence over the automatic chat assignment to agent
  • If the setting “Expired or Closed chat will not be assigned to Bot but leave the last assignee in case of new message” is turned ON, then this setting will take precedence over round-robin and such chats will remain assigned to the last assigned user when the chat gets re-opened
  • This assignment logic does not impact Pending chats getting re-opened before they expire.
  • This logic will not work when a team is manually assigned to a chat. It is meant to work only for default team assignments or those done through automation.

Check out this video for some practical examples on how this feature can be used.

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